


The Sum of Our Parts

by koldtblod



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: 'You are my people' just got me y'know, Canon Compliant, Gen, I recently read The Road and I think the style of writing inspired me, TLOUP2 Spoilers, The Resort Santa Barbara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:16:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27602663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koldtblod/pseuds/koldtblod
Summary: "I'm Abby," the woman had said on her arrival, "and this is Lev, and if anyone in here so much as thinks about touching him, I swear to God, I won't need a gun to kill you."In a canon compliant version of events from the cells of the Santa Barbara Resort, we follow Eva, one of the Rattler's prisoners, as she and her group struggle to understand the motivation behind the newcomer's actions.Anthony tells the woman she ought to be quiet.Cooper and Mariam swear that she's a danger.Eva watches as the days go by, as the woman's resistance crumbles but through it all, she keeps the boy pressed close to her side."Whatever it takes, right, to get us out?"
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	1. The Sum of our Parts

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, I'm joining the fanfiction boat for this game after feeling thoroughly distraught at the end of P2!
> 
> Spoilers, of course. General warnings apply for the subject matter.
> 
> In this story, we do have some... extra characters. I won't use the term OCs because that, they are not. The names of these people have been plucked out of thin air but I know exactly who's who when it comes to game footage! See end of fic notes for details.*

"I'm Abby," the woman had said on her arrival, "and this is Lev, and if anyone in here so much as thinks about touching him, I swear to God, I won't need a gun to kill you."

The other prisoners shifted uncomfortably.

Abby had a busted nose and her eyes were wide with fear and suspicion. She still had blood, fresh and wet, streaming down her face and kept her arms aloft to shield the boy who stumbled behind her. She was built like a brick shithouse. She could easily tackle any one of them to the floor and have them out cold in a matter of seconds, because fear was powerful, as were her muscles, and that was the scent in the air that night. Despair was the colour of the filth in the corners of the cell and Eva knew she saw it all perfectly.

Newcomers like Abby, they were livewires.

"Big talk won't get you far in here," said Anthony hoarsely, his mouth curving into a humourless smile. "Besides," he added, "'s'not us you oughta be afraid of. It's them, out there."

"We all arrived the same as you," said Mariam.

Abby continued to sidestep in horror around the group.

"She'll get us killed," offered Cooper, much later in the night.

"I reckon she's dangerous," agreed Mariam, nodding intensely.

Eva sighed and folded her arms.

No one could be sure that Abby was asleep. They kept their voices quiet, but conversations carried differently in the gloom; every sound echoed off the paved stone walls and reverberated tenfold. They had to be careful.

"You know she's terrified," said Eva.

"We've seen her type before."

"Someone to fight for," said Cooper, "there's the clincher."

"It's all the same," insisted Anthony. "If she cracks, everyone cracks. She steps outta line, and we're all punished."

"It's only the first night," said Eva pitifully.

She didn't remember for how long she'd been there.

Morning dawned, as awful as ever.

Eva stumbled to her feet. She heard the dry coughs of Anthony from behind her; saw Mariam being dragged up from the floor and Cooper trying to stand.

Abby might have made a run for it, were the end of a rifle not trained over her forehead.

"Get on," said the guard. "Eyes down, you know the rules."

They were buffeted out of the cell.

The heavy doors clanged loudly leaving Abby and Lev alone with each other.

The routine never changed. The Rattlers always kept the newcomers in the cells for the first few days.

To break the human spirit was the ultimate goal. They needed their prisoners too weak to stage a revolt against the on-duty guards; too disorientated from the days underground to tell which way was the exit. Eventually released, and allowed up to the courtyard, the prisoners would lurch out into the heat, crying or cowering. They were starved, in most cases. They were whittled down to the most basic of human instincts. The ones who didn't run would collapse to their knees; they would plead and beg for freedom or mercy.

The guards would tell them, "If you do as we say, we'll give you something to eat. We'll make sure you come out every day. If you defy us..."

They would jeer, and point towards the pool.

Fabian had been the first to meet the Infected that were hoarded and dragging themselves across the sun-cracked tiles.

Gabriel had been the first to be shot in the allotment.

Only a month or so after arriving, Eva had seen with her own eyes the brutality that could be expected for those who opposed the authority, but the most harrowing for her was when Anna attacked one of the guards. She would've killed the bastard, were it not for Phillip's foot catching on a loose flagstone as he ran to barricade the door. Her oldest friends were descended on by Rattlers in bullet-proof vests.

Phillip had been dragged back behind bars and Anna off to the pillars.

The guards decided they were all to blame.

The entire cell had missed out on rations, several days in a row, and Phillip wasn't treated for his injuries. He died on the floor of the cell, bleeding out from his wounds, and his body rotted beside them all for weeks.

Only Anthony remained from the original group.

He said to Eva, as they scrubbed at the laundry with numb hands,

"I think Abby will be difficult."

Only the pacifists survived.

It wasn't a life. Eva felt the slide of her bones and wasting of her muscles with every day that passed, yet what was the alternative? She didn't want to be ripped apart by neither Infected nor bullets nor spend the last moments of her existence in agony. Eva was afraid to die.

"I hope she calms down," she said, "for the boy's sake."

Anthony nodded.

"Keep an eye on her," he said.

"Hey, dickhead!" Abby shouted.

"Sit down," hissed Mariam.

"I wanna know why we're here."

She paced back and forth around the cage like a lion in the zoo, if such a thing still existed. Lev stood with his hands clutching the cold iron of the bars and stared at the guard by the door.

Neither would take the spare blanket they'd been offered.

Abby bared her teeth like a feral dog whenever any of the group got too close.

"Why d'you think?" scoffed Anthony. "The rest of the world's starvin', 'cept for these guys here."

Abby didn't respond. She pounded the bars with the palm of her hand.

"Answer me!" she insisted.

Eva caught the movement in the corner of her eye, and then she turned away. She was unable to watch as the guard pummelled Abby hard in the stomach with the butt of his gun.

Like certain few they had seen before, Abby didn't cry when the time came to bring her up to the surface. She didn't quail. She grit her teeth and the guard's wrestled her to her feet and she headbutted the woman behind her when, in turn, they moved to Lev.

The guard had howled, clutching her nose.

A hand gripped tight in the back of Abby's hair.

"Try that again —"

They were taken upstairs.

Eva and the rest of the group followed on, as usual, at gunpoint, compliant where Abby still struggled. The boy, too, wriggled between the arms of the guard who held him. When they were flung to the dusty floor, the heat of the California sun bearing down on their heads, Lev had been the first to dash.

A line of bullets bit into the ground before him.

Abby yelled and flung herself after.

Then, they cowered.

The sergeant's boots came down before them and he laughed.

"Oh dear," he said. "These two haven't been tamed, have they?"

It was always the same — the folk from out of town, they hadn't a clue. They didn't understand the consequences. Isha and Andrea, Abraham and Nicolas, they'd all gone the same way.

Abby and Lev would surely be headed in a similar direction.

"You're a Scar," said Cooper.

"A Seraphite," said Abby.

The word came out through gritted teeth and accompanied a glare.

There were eating their meals in their respective corners of the cell, but Cooper was staring across at the boy — at the marks on his cheeks.

"Yes," Lev breathed. "I used to be."

"And now you're slaves."

"We're Fireflies," said Abby. And her voice was thick.

Anthony and Eva exchanged a glance. Mariam lifted her head, pausing between mouthfuls of bread.

"You aren't anythin' anymore," she said.

"The Fireflies are all in that pool," said Anthony.

But everyone was given a chance or two.

The guards let her keep the braid in the beginning.

Eva heard them joking about using it to pull Abby about if her attitude continued; to steer or hold the woman in a variety of depraved ways. They found it very funny. They called her 'Blondie' with a lack of creative flair and there was something in the smiles of the men that Eva recognised.

When it became obvious that Abby wasn't as willing as the rest to fall into line, they started to discuss potential other uses for her.

Eva reckoned they'd have more of a fight if they tried with Abby than with her, like before, but if the guards had managed to take down muscled opponents in the past, they could do it again without a doubt.

If Abby heard, she refused to acknowledge it.

She still squared her shoulders and stared the guards hard in the face whenever she was called from the cell. They split her and Lev up and although the boy always tried to join Abby, always he was stopped.

He picked potatoes.

She went with Anthony for laundry.

Eva knew the pair spoke, late in the night, like she and others, when they thought no one was listening. It was always the same story, always the same whispers.

"We're getting out of here, don't worry."

"Abby, they're going to hurt you."

"I don't care. They won't stop me."

"You don't know what they're like," said Eva, one evening, in an attempt at conversation.

Abby raised her head from between her knees.

She said, "I've seen enough."

"No," Eva told her, "you haven't seen the half. They haven't made an example of you yet, but trust — believe me — it's coming. The only way to get by in this place is to keep your mouth shut, your eyes down."

A beat, and then,

"You need to get rid of the braid."

Abby shook her head.

"It's all I have," she said, "except for Lev."

Lev would rather she cut it off.

Eva didn't need to ask, in the end; she saw the horror on his face when, three hours later than expected, three hours later than Anthony, Abby came limping — bruised and broken — back into the cell. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Even Lev stayed rooted to the spot, his mouth agape, as the door clanged shut behind the prisoner and she crawled onto the floor.

There were bald patches on Abby's scalp.

Her hands shook as she reached up to untangle the braid and then, without a word, began to rethread it.

Cooper let out a low groan.

Eva's throat felt dry.

Anthony sighed deeply, solemnly and, as if the incident had served nothing more than to teach a valuable lesson, he said,

"Don't you see? You have to stay quiet. Compliance is everythin' to folks like this."

They woke in the morning to empty canteens instead of water.

Abby's eyes were dark and hollowed and her face was set into a grimace of foreboding.

"She saved my life," said Lev, days later.

Eva wiped the sweat from her brow and glanced up, back aching, from picking the bags of potatoes.

"I know what everyone says about Abby," he went on. "You all think she's crazy; like she wants to start trouble and put everyone in danger. It isn't like that. She's looking out for the both of us. We made it through by being tough."

"Right," said Eva.

Cooper's brother had been butchered for being tough.

"It's just," she said, "each other's all we've got. There's nothing gained from acting out."

"We could all escape together," suggested Lev.

"No," said Eva. "No one escapes from here."

People were killed or beaten or hung, drawn and quartered but never, ever did they escape. Attempts were futile. Laura had been tethered next to the Infected in the courtyard, when she got herself bitten in a bid for freedom — a reminder to all, thought Eva, who were thinking of chancing it.

She told Lev the most they could ask for was water to drink and food to eat. When he inquired about medicine, Eva shook her head.

"Nothing for us," she said, "but it's better than the alternative."

"What _is_ the alternative?" asked Lev.

"Have you seen the shoreline?"

Weeks turned into months.

Abby's face stretched thinner.

All the while, in her eyes, a sour determination. Quiet terror. Endless glares and glowers and always a grimace to match.

Eva waited for the day when Abby's anger would burn away. She waited, and she watched for any signs that Abby was beginning to weaken in mindset as well as in stature. It happened to the best of them sooner or later. They withered into mere shells of their former selves, or else died because they said the wrong thing to the wrong guard.

The only indication of change was the tremble that Eva sometimes caught in Abby's hands and the slow, sad way in which she looked at Lev, and he at her, when they passed the Infected in the pool.

Lev's stomach joined hers in its growling chorus when, for the fifth time, Abby's rations were slashed and, by default, his along with them.

That evening, Cooper offered an olive branch — divided his questionable portion of stale bread and beans amongst the three of them — but Abby turned it away. She said to feed the boy; it wasn't his fault. 

It wasn't Cooper's fault.

"It'll be all of us next," said Mariam.

And it was only a matter of time.

"What I'll do, Lev, don't judge me for it."

"Whatever it takes, right, to get us out?"

"Whatever it takes."

The days sent to work were hot, and the nights in the cell were cold.

Eva's eyes constantly stung with the sweat and the dirt caked around them, and her skin itched beneath the grime, prickling with sunburn.

The top of Abby's shoulders glowed an angry red.

A bruise in the shape of a fist coloured her cheekbone and Eva knew — didn't need to see — from Abby's movements alone that her ribs bore similar marks.

She was kicked to the ground one day in the allotment.

Eva heard the breath leave Abby's lungs; smelt the vomit as she was booted in the stomach through the dusty air.

"Where's the whip?" asked one of the guards. "We'll see you don't try that again!"

"Don't look," whispered Eva, as Lev made to raise his head.

"Hey, the whip? What's she done now?"

"This bitch thought she'd go for my gun."

"They've put her in isolation, Eva."

Lev huddled close to Eva's side that night.

There were times Abby didn't come back in the evenings. Eva would force a smile in Lev's direction and he in return, and they'd shuffle on the floor and then there would be silence.

Sometimes, when they woke, Abby would be sitting with her back against the wall. Others, she'd be gone until late afternoon. She'd return with new bruises, nevertheless, with fresh cuts and injuries, blood seeping into the chapped lines of her lips, and the rest of the group would exchange a glance and share a thought:

Newcomers like Abby, they were reckless ticking time bombs.

To prove the point, Cooper was the one to bear the brunt of Abby's next defiance.

Anthony, too, received a beating for stretching a hand out to Lev, to stop him from running to Abby's aid after shift when she'd healed enough to square up to the guards.

She and Mariam fought about that — did so viciously and without merit. Mariam spent three days spitting blood after starting the argument and throwing the first punch, and Abby was wrestled by Cooper, Eva and Lev all alike away from the other woman, but not before bouncing her face off the floor.

The guards laughed.

They rattled encouragingly at the cell with their hands and their weapons, cheering the opponents on. The fight only ceased to be funny when Abby reeled and spat in the face of the closest. In a second, the guard's expression turned from one of glee to revulsion and his arm came through the bars.

He grabbed for Abby's braid as she turned away and pulled her tight against the metal. Whatever he hissed, as his free hand pawed between Abby's thighs, was harrowing enough to freeze her in place.

For the first time that night, Eva heard the cries in the darkness.

"It's okay," whispered Lev. "Just a little longer."

In the end, the woman was taken to the pillars.

Eva's eyes had just begun to close when she heard the movement on the other side of the cell; a _scratch scratch scratch_ ; stone upon stone, and Abby's voice in the distance,

"Lev!"

There were footsteps.

Whispers.

Mariam murmured fretfully in sleep beside Eva on the floor and Eva released her breath. Her eyes had fallen shut despite her best efforts for what felt like only a moment, before — in the distance — gunshots. Screams. "Get her!"

The cells were pitch black.

The oil lamp that normally burned dimly in the corner with the guard was extinguished and Eva sat up in a cold panic. For a moment, it was difficult to remember where she was.

Anthony swore.

"What the fuck?"

"Where's Abby?" asked Cooper.

Because surely, by now they knew, it had to be her to blame.

Eva couldn't see her hand in front of her face, but neither Abby nor Lev replied when she called for them. The group sat in silent, endless anticipation, straining their ears to catch the sounds from above.

"What should we do?" asked Eva eventually.

"Don't move," said Anthony. "It could be a trap."

Whether they stayed for a minute or an hour, unmoving, Eva couldn't tell. From the corridor outside, presently there came voices, accompanied by heavy boots against the flagstones. When the door opened, orange light flooded into the room.

There, in the corner, the unconscious guard slumped with a bruise to his temple.

The oil lamp was shattered.

The door to the cell hung wide on its hinges.

Eva heard the gasp from Cooper but there wasn't enough time.

Lev was carried past in between the arms of two guards, flailing and howling. Another slammed the door of the cell with a growl, a gun in her hands — "Where the fuck are they keys?" — and next came Abby.

Her braid was tight in the fist of her captor.

She struggled against the weight of the two at her shoulders, as they dragged her bare-footed, spitting and hissing, covered in blood, into the room.

"Torres is dead," said the sergeant who followed her. "She's slit his damn throat."

"With his own knife."

"What about the kid?"

"Looking for weapons," said the sergeant. "String 'em both up out there."

The blade came down behind Abby's head and severed her braid from the rest of her filthy hair.

Later, Eva said, "I told her to get rid of it..." as if the locks left behind, bereft on the floor, still mattered to Abby.

Ever mattered at all.

Anthony stood with his head pressed between two metal bars.

"There's no comin' back from the pillars," he mumbled.

No dignity in death, nor heroic spin on the story to fill the empty space.

Eva couldn't stand to listen to the tales the guards wove. She couldn't tell whether their accounts were all bravado or else included a sprinkling of the truth, maybe even the whole truth, but regardless the descriptions turned her stomach.

"Was it always her plan?" asked Mariam.

"I don't know," Eva told her. "I don't care anymore."

The cell had been open all along.

There was smoke in the air on the next night of importance.

There was a chaos to accompany the setting of the sun that spread through the resort like wildfire.

It was an evening like any other until the posts on the outskirts started to radio in and the sergeant, over the airways, told the guard by the door,

"Stay, 'case we get any strays."

"There must be an army," muttered Cooper, as the group stared at the ceiling.

They could hear the gunfire.

They could hear the shrieks and wails and explosion of bombs.

"They're fighting for territory."

No one is coming for us, thought Eva.

And on that, she was right.

A young girl, almost as skeletal as them, came bursting through the door with a rifle in arms. She gawped and they stared back at each other for no more than a singular second before the guard let out a yell.

Eva heard the thwack of the baseball bat into the girl's ribs.

There was shouting.

Suddenly, everyone was on their feet.

The pair grappled and then — Anthony and Mariam had the guard by the throat — Cooper ran for the door. Another sickening crunch as bones were broken.

Cooper dived for the lockers.

The clanging of the gate was bouncing off the walls.

"Where's Abby?" shouted the girl.

"She's bit!" 

"Get back —"

"Hey, don't point that fucking thing at me —"

No one was going to save them.

The girl took off at a limp through the room, her hand at her side, bleeding profusely. She could cut Abby down; take the boy and a boat from the shore and sail into the blackness. She could find them either dead or unconscious; cry into their necks with anguish because only a lover, a true friend or family would venture into Santa Barbara in search of a person they'd lost.

They were going to die, thought Eva, but it was the first time in months, maybe even a year, that she felt anything close to being alive.

Anthony pressed a pistol tightly into her palm.

"We're going to fight," she told him sternly.

We're going home.

We're getting out.


	2. The Whole is Greater

They spent the first few weeks hiding out in the basement of a ransacked house, 7 miles from the coast, building their strength. Abby had doubted Lev would survive.

She questioned throughout her own ability as she nursed the wounds left by Ellie, scavenging little in the way of food, and woke often — sweating and terrified — in the night with the echoes of Rattler taunts in her head.

Abby didn't know what had happened back at the resort.

She presumed that Ellie had taken out the majority of the Rattlers, single-handedly cutting through their territory like Joel had cut through the Fireflies at the hospital, but all the same, she couldn't believe it. She didn't see how a girl barely clinging to life could massacre a community so well versed in combat as the Rattlers and by proxy undermine the entire faculty.

The same could be said for the Wolves.

Her friends.

Mel and Owen; Nora and the rest.

Abby spent the long days standing guard in the doorway, hidden behind slabs of sunburned asphalt and splintered, rotting wood. If either survived — either Ellie or the Rattlers — then Abby didn't catch sight of them. She didn't sleep any easier despite it and, by the third week, had even managed to convince herself that both parties would be seeking to hunt her. In secret.

She never stopped looking over her shoulder.

Her dreams became further muddled with visions of waking to find herself back in the cells. Ellie would always be holding the knife tight to Lev's throat and telling her, over and over, while Abby begged her to stop,

"This is for Joel. You're going to fight me."

She would be raped again.

She would be beaten and assaulted by Rattlers full of bullet holes and Ellie would be standing, glaring, a menacing figure atop the ashes of the burning buildings.

"Can you see them?" asked Lev, quietly one day, when despite Abby's protests he'd pulled himself up from the floor and joined her on watch.

The stragglers in view were small at a glance but they were coming closer, as a result growing larger, and Abby was following every step with bated breath. She didn't have any weapons — just the hilt of a broken kitchen knife and a handful of ancient bullets — and, although their presence unnerved her, Abby was banking on the fact that all four were injured.

Between the houses, open in the street, they limped.

Abby muttered an affirmative and Lev sidled closer to the gap in the door.

"They're sorta familiar," he told her, squinting in the sun.

"I can't protect us."

"I doubt you'll have to."

She and Mariam had never seen eye to eye, that was true, but Abby couldn't deny the relief she felt when hers was the face that came first into focus ** , ** as she and the group climbed the rubble in the doorway.

Abby had grabbed initially for a fragment of wood.

Lev was poised and ready to run —

"If I get hurt!"

— but instead, he yelped in recognition.

Mariam's feet hit the floor; Anthony, shouting to the others, came crashing next over the top and then Cooper with a rifle; and Eva, with dried blood crusting the left side of her legs.

"Oh, Jesus, it's you."

"You're all still alive."

"We barely made it out," said Eva, later that night.

Lev had worked wonders with a needle and thread on everyone's injuries, and was again fast asleep with his head on an old hessian sack. Anthony had scavenged sardines and tinned peaches from somewhere along their journey, and they'd practically feasted before settling down. It was Mariam who sat the closest to the staircase; it was Cooper who presented Abby with the pistol.

They didn't say a word about her disregard for the rules.

The closest they got was to mention the pillars, when Anthony asked, "What was it like — hangin' up there?"

"That a serious question?"

"I just can't believe you're here."

Abby still didn't sleep.

She heard the others tossing and turning all throughout the night, as restless as she was, or else changing shifts on lookout (in itself, a luxury, after those weeks alone). Collectively, the four of them — with Cooper already alert — sat straight from the floor, when they heard a dog barking in the distance.

They didn't say a word, but everyone thought it.

In the morning, they gathered their bags.

Abby tried not to dismay when the bullets didn't fit the pistol.

They set out together into the sunlight, leaving the house and the basement and hopefully the memories of slavery behind. It was only supposed to be the two of them, thought Abby, her and Lev, together against the world.

But she needed a group.

In a way, they needed her.

It was difficult to pinpoint or explain exactly how they were all indebted to each other but, as Mariam said, they were stronger together.

"We were always tryin' to tell you."

"D'you believe the Fireflies are still around?" asked Eva, as Abby fell into pace at her side that afternoon.

Out of her pocket, she brought a pendant.

Abby's hands shook when she held it.

"Why'd you have this?"

"It was my mom's," said Eva.

"My dad was a surgeon."

It was decided.

"We're going to Catalina Island."

**Author's Note:**

> I read something somewhere about Abby's braid being a testament to how long she's been alive and kept surviving and, in truth, I think that's part of the reason why seeing Abby on the pillars at the end of the game really struck me. I won't apologise for loving her. TLOUp2 has it's faults but I honestly _can't be bothered_ to talk about the downfalls in detail and I enjoyed it overall. Instead, I'll ask, why was the section with the Rattlers so rushed and half-formed? I crave context.
> 
> Thank you in advance for kudos, comments, etc. They're all appreciated.
> 
> *For those of you who were wondering, Mariam, Anthony and Cooper are in my mind the prisoners in the cell met by Ellie (this might be obvious), though specifically the three who grab hold of the guard. Cooper is the one with the key, the first out of the cell; Anthony follows on and Mariam is the one to declare that Ellie is bit. Although in the background we see several others, these poor souls don't factor into this story. I like to think Eva is the woman with bare feet standing closest to Cooper.


End file.
